The seventh and penultimate instalment of the big screen is as unwieldy as its title. The opening scene sets out the picture’s modish theme as a high-tech Russian submarine is tricked into firing on itself by a sinister AI device. It is revealed that the …
The latest from singular oddball French writer-director Quentin ‘Deerskin’ Dupieux is a slight at 77 minutes, but consistently droll take on the superhero genre. We first encounter the spandex-clad Tobacco Force - dashing leader Benzène (Lellouche), osten…
The concluding episode of the Indiana Jones saga undoes some of the damage of the dispiriting previous outing for the archaeologist adventurer, 2008’s ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’, but the zip of fizz of Steven Spielberg’s origina…
Based on true events, this French feminist drama charts the experiences of Maureen Kearney, a dogged and well-respected union representative working for nuclear energy company Ariva. When the company’s boss (Foïs), with whom Kearney (Huppert) enjoys a goo…
This lyrical documentary explores the life of a deaf Iraqi immigrant. Lawand was only five-years-old when he and his family, older brother Rawa and parents, fled the country, undergoing an arduous journey from Iraq to Derby. In his native country, there w…
Tastefully rendered in black and white, photographer/director Anton Corbijn’s documentary is an entertaining whistle-stop tour of the freewheeling career of legendary Prog-era design company Hipgnosis, featuring entertaining yarns from the major players. …
Shades of ‘Zootropolis’ in Pixar’s latest, a romantic comedy meets immigrant tale set in a teeming city where different anthropomorphic elements must muck along. Husband and wife fire elements Bernie (del Carmen) and Cinder (Omni) are immigrants to Elemen…
Graduating from YouTube shorts, Australian twins Danny and Michael Philippou’s debut feature is an occasionally genuinely scary, but flawed horror tale. After a disconcerting prologue in which an Adelaide house party takes a very bad turn, we are introduc…
British-Moroccan director-screenwriter Fyzal Boulifa’s follow-up to the Essex housing estate drama ‘Lynn + Lucy’ is an empathetic slow-burning study of a mother and son in contemporary Morocco that nods to Sirkian melodrama and Fassbinder-style depictions…
Initially, this immigrant tale feels like a departure from Serraille’s debut, the sparkling comedy drama ‘Jeune Femme’, but it shares the earlier film’s feel for character detail and telling moments. Spanning twenty years and told in three chapters, each …
Even by his standards, Wes Anderson’s latest boasts some exquisite, meticulously-fashioned visuals, but once more, there is little resembling actual real human interaction here. It’s 1955 and a disparate group of grown-ups and their children have descende…
This adaptation of the Take That jukebox musical is a disappointingly rote feelgood Britfilm, as well as shameless attempt to replicate the success of ‘Mamma Mia!’. Aisling Bea is Rachel, a thirty-something nurse and 90s pop obsessive, constantly having t…
There was a period earlier this year when it seemed like a real possibility that that the first solo outing for Ezra Miller’s speedy DC superhero, Barry Allen/The Flash would never see the light of day, due to Ezra’s shocking behaviour in Florida. Neverth…
Despite its fascinating subject, this period biopic of the 18th century Black composer and violinist Joseph Bologne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges feels like a missed opportunity. Bologne was born to a white Frenchman plantation owner and an African slav…
The insightful and empathetic co-writing, co-directing debut from actor Riley Keough plays like a less jocular version of TV’s excellent ‘Reservation Dogs’. It revolves around two Olaga Lakota Native Americans living on the Pine Ridge reservation in South…
The seventh instalment of the Transformers ‘franchise’ (dread word) skips forward seven years from the surprisingly okay 1987-set ‘Bumblebee. The jump does not signal, thankfully, a return to the clanging obnoxiousness of prior instalments, but the whole …
Like its predecessor, but turned up to eleven, this animated sequel is endlessly visually inventive and eclectic, almost exhaustingly so. A brief prologue sets the scene as alternate universe hero and emo drummer Gwen Stacy aka Spider-Gwen (voiced by Stei…
Director: Rob Savage The Hollywood debut of British director Savage, is a competent and occasionally atmospheric, but undistinguished adaptation of a minor Stephen King short story. High school student Sadie (Thatcher) and her younger sister Sawyer (Blai…
Theatre director Tina Satter’s debut, adapted from her stage play and based closely on real events, is an almost unbearably tense thriller. It’s 2018 and Reality Winner (Sweeney), a former Air Force intelligence officer turned translator contracted to the…
The family in this flawed but interesting and heartfelt Brit drama have enough issues to fill a series. Natey Jones is Travis, just out of prison where he was serving time for drug-related offences, and returning to his family in Lambeth. His glamourous p…
Veteran Chilean documentarian Guzman’s film is a timely and quietly inspiring essay about political activism, focusing on the female dissenting voices, which revolves around the 2019 protests where one-and-a-half million protestors took to the Santiago st…
The debut from Italian actor turned writer-director Cavalli is a stylish and occasionally droll but ultimately hollow character study. Porcaroli is the titular character, an early twentysomething recently returned to her mother’s Turin villa after a perio…
Narrated by Alan Cummings and featuring diary readings from Rupert Everett, this briskly-paced and genuinely illuminating documentary about the seemingly quintessential British playwright/songwriter/actor posits Coward as a modern figure who would have be…
Co-directed by octogenarian Nobel Prize winning author Annie Ernaux, this melancholy and lyrical cine-memoir, was instigated by her son David after he came across a trove of home movies belonging to the family. It starts in 1972 when Ernaux’s then-husband…
Ari Aster’s follow-up to Scandinavian horror ‘Midsommar’ is an equally bold and unwieldy three-hour road movie meets pitch black horror comedy meets oedipal study, featuring a commendably fearless performance from Joaquin Phoenix. He is Beau Wasserman, a …
Set in the Morocco smalltown Salé, this drama from writer-director Touzani is as affecting as it is considered. Mina (Azabal) runs a traditional shop selling Kaftans that are lovingly devised and sewn by her master tailor husband Halim (Bakri). Modernity …
This understated and disturbing dystopian sci-fi picture, set five minutes into the future, posits the Japanese government’s drastic response to the burgeoning elderly population. Calling on Japanese traditions of self-sacrifice, the authorities have devi…
This measured low-key drama explores the fallout after a life-changing incident in the life of a young Gaelic football enthusiast. Twentysomething Cian (McGivney) lives in rural Ireland with his morose father (Cranith). When not working at the farm, Cain’…
French-Cambodian director Chou’s picture is a haunting study of displacement and belonging. In her debut acting role, visual artist Jim-Min Park is Freddie, a twentysomething Korean woman who was adopted as a baby by a French couple and raised in the Fren…
This illuminating rockumentary about the architect of rock and roll Little Richard investigates his struggle with his faith and sexuality as well as the liberating effect he had on subsequent artists and the broader culture. It’s at its most fascinating i…
Based on the true events that led to Nike signing superstar basketball player Michael Jordan, Affleck’s picture is part knockabout comedy drama and part feel-good inspirational tale. It’s far more successful as the former. A blast of period sound and…
This troubling and mildly surreal study of the tumultuous 60s in the U.S. and the choices the Government made to address the social discontent feels depressingly timely. During a time of huge civil unrest, most notoriously the 1965 Watts Riots in LA, Pres…
Based on a selection from Haruki Murakami’s twenty-four story collection of the same name, the animated directorial debut feature of composer Pierre Földes explores the psychologic fallout after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and the subsequent tsunami, on a …
Shades of Dreyer, Bergman, even 'The Wicker Man', in this austere but beautifully-rendered and thematically-rich drama from Icelandic writer-director Hlynur Pálmason. It’s the late 19th Century and young Danish Lutheran priest Lucas (Hove) is despatched t…
Despite its thriller elements, this slow-burning drama from Spanish director-cowriter Serra plays like an oblique mood piece. Mangel is De Roller, the High Commissioner of an island in French Polynesia. His lofty title belies his true demeanour. De Roller…
A provincial young man becomes a political pawn in this effective thriller set in an Egyptian University. Adam (Barhom) is the fisherman’s son who earns a scholarship to study at the elite Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the epicentre of the power of Sunni …
A towering central performance from Kristine Kujath Thorp keeps this rickety satire on the road. She is Signe, a terminally narcissistic and socially anxious young woman. We first encounter her in a high-end restaurant with her struggling artist boyfriend…
Despite its role-playing game source material being nearly half a century old, this rollicking adaptation feels very much in thrall to more recent, small and large screen sword and sorcery fare. Pine is Edgin, a roguish bard and ex-underground spy turned …
This debut from French director-cowriter Quivoron is pitched curiously between Dardenne brothers’ social realism and high-octane heist movie. Impressive newcomer Ledru is Julia, a rebellious young woman from a rough French banlieue who finds a sense of co…
Writer-director Mia Hansen-Love and Léa Seydoux prove a perfect match in this affecting drama about a woman weighing up her place in the world. Seydoux is Sandra Kienzler, a single mother with an eight-year-old daughter just about managing to get by in Pa…
Directed by Joe Massot of Led Zeppelin’s ‘The Song Remains the Same’ fame, 1981 concert picture/documentary ‘Dance Craze’ catches the 2Tone movement at the its peak. Artists and performances include The Specials, featuring the late great Terry Hall, drop…
This striking feature debut from Chilean writer-director Alegria is part magical realist ecology fable and part touching family drama. Due to pollution, fish are dying in a river in a small Chilean town, their lifeless bodies washed up on land. A woman em…
The first Shazam! picture in which teenage orphan and fostered teenager Billy Batson, appealingly played by Asher Angel, was given the ability to transform himself into a hunky superhero by Djimon Hounsou’s wizard, was a fun superhero take on ‘Big’, as w…
This sequel to last year’s dull ‘requel’ (a reboot/sequel apparently) ‘Scream’, relocates the action to New York and manages to drum up a little more energy in the process. A clever prologue has nervous film lecturer (the excellent Weaving, allowed to use…
The lows far outnumber the highs in this disappointingly rote and dull rockumenary, adapted from Lizzie Goodman’s (reportedly excellent) book, ‘Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City 2001–2011’. At the turn of the millennium, …
This fascinating picture from documentarians Jennifer ‘Burn This Letter Please’ Tiexiera and Camilla Hall is part where-are-they-now catch up, and part ethical examination of the experiences of people who have agreed, with various degrees of willingness, …
Multi-hyphenate star-director-co-writer Kelley Kali’s pandemic era-set picture is a social realist fable a la ‘Bicycle Thieves’ with some droll laughs. Danny (Kali) is a widowed young mother living with her eight-year-old daughter Wes (Moss) in a tent by …
The third instalment for the boxer Adonis ‘Donnie’ Creed, and the ninth in the overarching ‘Rocky’ saga, draws cannily on horror and thriller elements to subvert the series’ outsider underdog formula. A prologue set in 2002 charts how the teenage Donnie w…
In Anonymous Club, first-time documentary filmmaker Danny Cohen provides an insight into the life of Australian singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett shortly after the release of her second album, Tell Me How You Really Feel. For fans of the musician, the fi…
Writer-director Koreeda’s second picture outside of Japan, following the disappointing showbiz-adjacent French drama ‘The Truth’, is a typically humane ensemble piece meets road movie set in South Korea. It begins with a young woman So-young (Lee Ji-eun) …
Actor turned director Manuela Martelli’s debut is a stylish and engrossing drama. Carmen (Küppenheim) is an elegant middle-class housewife married to a doctor, Miguel (Goic) in 1976 Chile. Her husband teases Carmen in front of dinner party guests saying s…
Richard Eyre’s adaptation of Alan Bennett’s play, scripted for screen by Heidi ‘Call the Midwife’ Thomas, is a warts and all love letter to the NHS and the doughty staff who keep it running. Bally Gill is resident physician Dr Valentine, a conscientious h…
Inspired by real events, Spanish director’s Sorogoyen’s film, co-scripted with Isabel Peña, is pitched somewhere between sociological study of gentrification and brooding thriller a la ‘Straw Dogs’. Olga (Foïs) and Antoine (Ménochet) are a middle-aged mid…
Belgian writer-director Dhont’s follow-up to his impressive but flawed feature debut, ‘Girl’ the portrait of a Trans ballet dancer, is a heart-rending and empathetic coming of age drama set in rural picturesque Belgium. Thirteen-year-olds Léo (Dambrine) a…
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